Scott C. Bailey-Hartsel

Professor of Chemistry University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Professor Scott C. Bailey-Hartsel received his B.S. degree from Ohio University and then went on to earn his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 1985. He worked as an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellow under David Cafiso from 1985-1987 at UVa and was an NSF/CNRS research fellow at Universite Pierre et Marie Curie andInstitut Curie in Paris in 1995 and 96. Scott is currently Professor and immediate past Chair of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, a member of the ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) and was a past member of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). He has received over $1,000,000 of external research funding in drug delivery and peptide research and has published numerous research articles with over 35 different undergraduate co-authors. He was named CASE Professor of the Year for the State of Wisconsin in 2001.

Henry A. Boyter, Jr.

Director of the Center for Environmentally Sustainable Textile and Apparel Businesses

Henry Boyter Jr. is the Director of CESTAB (Center for Environmentally Sustainable Textile and Apparel Businesses). His research and industry service is directed at the application of green chemical techniques to textile processes. He is the past Chair of the AATCC RA100 Global Sustainability Technology Research Committee. He is a former member of the Peer Review Group for the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) Restricted Substances List Task Force and was a Joint Committee (JC) member developing a “Sustainability Assessment for Commercial Furnishings Fabric – NSF/ANSI 336 – 2011” under the Association for Contract Textiles (ACT) and NSF International and was Leader of the Water Group. He is currently involved with an industry task force under the direction of NTA to Update the VPEP form used by industry for chemical information exchange and is working on the Outdoor Industry Association’s (OIA) Eco-Index as a member of the Toxics Subgroup.He is the author of “Environmental Legislation USA” In Environmental Aspects of Textile Dyeing; Woodhead Publishing Limited.

John M. Butler

National Institute of Standards and Technology Fellow & Group Leader

John M. Butler is NIST Fellow and Group Leader of Applied Genetics at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He is author of the internationally acclaimed textbook Forensic DNA Typing—now in its third edition—as well as more than 100 scientific articles and invited book chapters. His book was also been translated into Chinese (2007) and Japanese (2009). He earned his Ph.D in 1995 from the University of Virginia with Ralph Allen (Analytical Chemistry). His Ph.D. research was conducted in the FBI Laboratory, involved pioneering the techniques now used worldwide in modern forensic DNA testing. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Butler has worked in government and industry. He designed and maintains STRBase (http://www.cstl.nist.gov/biotech/strbase), an information resource for short tandem repeat DNA markers. As a member of the World Trade Center Kinship and Data Analysis Panel, he aided the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner in their work to identify the remains of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also serves on the Department of Defense Quality Assurance Oversight Committee for DNA Analysis and advises numerous national and international forensic DNA efforts. Dr. Butler has received numerous awards during his career including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2002), the Department of Commerce Gold Medal (2008) and Silver Medal (2002), the Arthur S. Flemming Award (2007), Brigham Young University’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Honored Alumnus (2005), and the Scientific Prize of the International Society of Forensic Genetics (2003). In August 2011, ScienceWatch.com announced that Dr. Butler was number one in the world as a high-impact author (number of citations per paper published) in legal medicine and forensic science for the decade of 2001-2011.

Christopher D. Claeboe

Senior R & D Specialist at Albemarle Corporation

After earning his Ph.D. with Sidney Hecht at the University of Virginia in 2003, Dr. Christopher Claeboe joined the laboratory of David R. Williams at Indiana University for a post-doctoral fellowship that was focused upon the total synthesis of Peloruside A. In 2005, Dr. Claeboe began his industrial career as a process chemist with Albemarle Corporation, working at their Baton Rouge, LA facility. He then transferred to their South Haven, MI facility in 2008 where he currently resides. While responsible for the completion of a variety of interesting side projects for the company including the pursuit of his MBA through Indiana University, his work is centered upon the process development and scale-up of custom active pharmaceutical ingredients ().

Francis Collins

National Institute of Health Director

Dr. Collins earned a B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Virginia in 1970 (mentor Carl Trindle). He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. He then enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning there an M.D. in 1977. rom 1978 to 1981, Dr. Collins served a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He then returned to Yale, where he was named a Fellow in Human Genetics at the medical school from 1981 to 1984. During that time, he developed innovative methods of crossing large stretches of DNA to identify disease genes. In 1984, Dr. Collins joined the University of Michigan in a position that would eventually lead to a Professorship of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics. Dr. Collins accepted an invitation in 1993 to succeed James Watson as Director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which became NHGRI in 1997. As Director, he oversaw the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. Dr. Collins’ accomplishments have been recognized by numerous awards and honors, including election to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On July 8, 2009, President Barack Obama announced he will nominate Dr. Collins to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Craig Crews

Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University

Professor Crews earned his Chemistry B.A. at the University of Virginia in 1986. He then studied in Germany at the University Tübingen with a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship. He earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Harvard University in 1993. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Stuart Schreiber at Harvard he joined the Yale Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Department faculty. He is also a faculty in the Departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology at Yale. His laboratory investigates chemical approaches to the study of biological questions and is specifically interested in the modes of action of biologically active natural products in order to investigate intracellular signaling pathways and identify novel targets for drug design. In 2006, Prof. Crews received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and, in 2009, he received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Cynthia S Dowd

Assistant Professor, The George Washington University

Professor Dowd earned her B.A. degree from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University (working with Richard Glennon). Following postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania (with Irwin Chaiken), she joined the NIH where she directed a synthetic chemistry group finding novel small molecules against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In 2007, she joined the Chemistry Department of George Washington University as an assistant professor. Her research interests broadly include anti-infective drug discovery, structure-based ligand design, and the development of chemical tools to understand important biological processes.

Christopher B. Ferenc

Associate Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP

After graduating from UVa with a B.S in Chemistry, Christopher Ferenc received his law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law, in Newark, NJ. His background in chemistry motivated him to pursue a career in the field of intellectual property law. His professional experience in this field includes interning with a U.S. Magistrate Judge and serving as legal support staff for a U.S. Congressional Committee. Currently, he is employed as a Patent Attorney in Washington, D.C. His practice focuses on the preparation and prosecution of U.S. and foreign patent applications in the chemical arts, as well as providing counsel to clients on issues relating to invalidity, infringement and patentability of U.S. patents.

April Frazier

Commercial Operations Manager at Pro-Cure Therapeutics

Dr. Frazier graduated from Harvey Mudd College with a B.S. in Applied Chemistry. In 2003, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia Chemistry Department with Prof. David Cafiso. She works at Pro-Cure Therapeutics (a Prostate Cancer Stem Cell Company) where she performs two roles. She is the Commercial Operations Manager and a research scientist. She manages business relationships with corporate partners and tests and develops assays for novel prostate cancer stem cells.

Benjamin A. Garcia

Assistant Professor at Princeton University

Professor Garcia received his B.S. degree from the University of California, Davis and then went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia under Donald Hunt in 2005. Ben then was an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with Professor Neil Kelleher. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Chemistry, and a member of the Quantitative and Computational Biology program at Princeton University where he has received a 2010 NIH Director’s New Innovator award.

J. Christopher Love

Associate Professor at MIT

Professor Love is an assistant professor in chemical engineering at MIT. He is also an associate member at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute, and associate faculty at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. He was named a Dana Scholar for Human Immunology and a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research in 2009.

Professor Love graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1999 (conducted research with Cassandra Fraser). He received his Ph.D. in 2004 in physical chemistry at Harvard University under the supervision of George Whitesides. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he extended his research into immunology at Harvard Medical School with Hidde Ploegh from 2004-2005, and at the Immune Disease Institute from 2005-2007. His current research uses microsystems to characterize heterogeneity among single cells with specific studies in HIV/AIDS, autoimmunity, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. He was selected as on of a Brilliant 10 for 2010 in PopSci.

David McWhorter

Principal of Catalyst Partners

Dr. McWhorter earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry (with Brooks H. Pate) from the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Chemistry from Washington and Lee University. As a Principal of Catalyst Partners, work focuses on helping clients navigate US Department of Homeland Security’ (DHS; especially the SAFETY Act) and helping DHS navigate his clients. Dr. David McWhorter spent over seven years at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). Most recently he served as the deputy project leader for IDA on the DHS SAFETY Act (the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002). In this position he led the technical evaluations of anti-terrorism products and services across a broad spectrum of countermeasures for chemical, biological, explosive, nuclear, cyber and human threats, including services. He was also instrumental in the implementation of the SAFETY Act including orchestrating the creation of the evaluation process, the drafting of the application kits, and the coordination of several government procurements, and the identification of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). In 2007, Dr. McWhorter became a member of the US Chamber of Commerce’s SAFETY Act committee, and in 2008 he was appointed to the Executive Board of NDIA’s Homeland Security Division.

Brian Pollok

Life Technologies’ Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Global Science & Innovation

Brian Pollok, Ph.D., is Life Technologies’ Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Global Science & Innovation based in Carlsbad, CA. He oversees the allocation of more than $350M in R&D funds annually, which has yielded innovative new products in the areas of DNA sequencing, cell analysis, and molecular biology. Dr. Pollok has been with Life Tech since 2003, previously serving as CSO and Head of Global R&D for Invitrogen, and as VP of R&D for the company’s Discovery Sciences unit in Madison, WI. Prior to joining Life Tech, Dr. Pollok served as Sr. VP of R&D and Co-Founder at Ansata Therapeutics in La Jolla (2002-03), as VP of Discovery Biology at Aurora Biosciences/Vertex Pharmaceuticals in San Diego (1997-2002), as Sr. Research Investigator at Pfizer Central Research in Groton, CT (1993-97), and as Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. (1987-93). Dr. Pollok received his B.A. in biology and chemistry from UVa, and his Ph.D. from UAB. Dr. Pollok held a Damon Runyon Cancer Fund postdoctoral fellowship at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal ASSAY, and is an advisor for several non-profit disease organizations. Dr. Pollok is also a past recipient of an American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award and an Arthritis Foundation Investigator Award.

Eric A. Rohlfing

U.S. Department of Energy Director of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division

Dr. Rohlfing is the division director of the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. He joined BES in 1997 and served as program manager for the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences program from 2000 to 2003 and as team leader for Fundamental Interactions from 2003 until October 2006, when he became division director. Dr. Rohlfing received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Princeton University in 1982. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Exxon Research and Engineering Company and Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the staff at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in 1986.

His research interests include the experimental characterization of transient molecules relevant to combustion processes, linear and nonlinear laser spectroscopies, trace detection of pollutants, molecular beam and mass spectrometric studies of carbon and metal clusters, and vibrational relaxation dynamics. He is the author of approximately 50 peer-reviewed articles, holds membership in the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Christian M. Rojas

Associate Professor, Barnard College

Professor Rojas earned his B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1989, where he did research with Ralph O. Allen on neutron activation analysis of archaeological artifacts. He received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Indiana University, working with David R. Williams. Following a postdoc with Julius Rebek at both MIT and The Scripps Research Institute, Professor Rojas joined the faculty at Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women in New York City. His research involves the development of nitrogen atom transfer reactions and their application to the synthesis of 2-amino sugars.

Webster Santos

Associate Professor at Virginia Tech

Professor Santos earned his B.S. degree from the University of Virginia and continued at UVA for his Ph.D. studies with Timothy Macdonald. After graduating in 2002, he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology with Professor Gregory L. Verdine. He is now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

Stuart L. Schreiber

Director of Chemical Biology at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

Dr. Schreiber was born February 6, 1956 and raised in Virginia. After receiving a B.A. degree (conducting research with Richard Sundberg) at the University of Virginia in June of 1977, he carried out graduate studies at Harvard University under the supervision of R. B. Woodward and Y. Kishi. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he joined the faculty at Yale University in May of 1981. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1984 and to Full Professor in 1986. In 1988, he returned to Harvard.

Dr. Schreiber is known for having developed systematic ways to explore biology, especially disease biology, using small molecules and for his role in the development of the field of chemical biology. Currently, the Schreiber group research is focused on:

Robert Sell

Corning Incorporated and Corning Community College

After Robert Sell earned his B.S. in Chemisty with High Distinctions from UVA in 1975, he worked for four years in the U.S. Navy as an instructor at the Naval Nuclear Power School teaching Chemistry, Radiological Fundamentals, and Materials Science. From 1979 to 2009, he worked with Corning Incorporated in a wide variety of positions in manufacturing, process engineering, product and market development, strategy development, intellectual property, product line management. During his time at Corning, he obtained a Masters in Business Administration from West Virginia University in 1987. Over the 30 years he worked at Corning , he participated in the areas of glass products for the pharmaceutical industry, environmental laboratory analysis, and semiconductor manufacturing. He is now retired from Corning and instructing at Corning Community College.

Steven Shipman

Assistant Professor of Chemistry New College of Florida

Professor Shipman received his B.A. from Rice University and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley under Charles Harris in 2005. He was then a post-doctoral researcher from 2006 until 2008 at the University of Virginia with Professor Brooks Pate. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry at New College of Florida, a small liberal arts college in Sarasota, FL. His research is concerned with the study of the rotational spectra of molecules in vibrationally-excited states at room temperature.

Seth W. Snyder

Seth W. Snyder, Ph.D. received a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania in Chemistry and Environmental Studies (1980), a M.S. in Physical Chemistry (1985) and a Ph.D. in Biophysics (1989) from the University of Virginia in James Demas‘ laboratory. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory in Photosynthesis. In 1989, he joined Abbott Laboratories, first in Alzheimer’s Disease Research and later in Pharmaceutical Discovery Research. In 1998, Seth rejoined Argonne as the Associate Director of the Chemistry Division where he developed new programs in nanoscience and applied biotechnology. In 2001, he joined the Energy Systems Division as the Section Leader of Chemical and Biological Technology and now Process Technology Research. His team develops new process technologies ranging from tree growth through conversion technologies and product separations. The goal is to improve energy efficiency in production of biofuels and biobased products, CO2 capture, and water treatment. In other technology areas, his team works on plastic recycling, PV materials, geothermal energy, and now battery materials.

He serves as the President of the Council for Chemical Research and as Argonne’s Lab Relationship Manager for the DOE Office of the Biomass Program. He is on the advisory board for several academic centers including: the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s “Center for Advanced Bioenergy Research”, South Dakota’s “Center for Bioprocessing Research”, and the NSF “Center for Bioenergy R&D”. He has published about fifty papers, has twelve patents (issued and pending), has presented or co-authored his research at 75 conferences over the past nine years. He has received three R&D 100 awards and an Outstanding Mentor Award from the DOE FAST Program.

Kian Tan

Assistant Professor at Boston College

Professor Kian Tan graduated with a B.S. in chemistry with a specialization in biochemistry from the University of Virginia in 1999. At UVa, Kian performed research in the group of Professor Dean Harman working on the development of an osmium-mediated asymmetric Diels-Alder reactions and the synthesis of epibatidine derivatives as analgesics. Subsequently, Kian worked jointly with Professors Robert Bergman and Jonathan Ellman at the University of California Berkeley on novel metal-mediated C-H activation reactions. He obtained his Ph. D. from UC-Berkeley in 2004. Working as a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Eric Jacobsen’s group at Harvard University, Kian focused on bifunctional urea catalysts for the enantioselective allylation of hydrazones. In 2006, Kian began as an Assistant Professor at Boston College where he enjoys teaching organic chemistry and guiding a research program focused on the new catalysts for the transformation of organic molecules.

Jeff Toney

Dean of the College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences at Kean University

Dr. Toney’s career has spanned both the pharmaceutical industry and academia. His academic training is in Chemistry (B.S., University of Virginia; M.S. and Ph.D., Northwestern University) and included research experience as a postdoctoral fellow in Molecular Biology (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School) and in Chemical Biology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

His current scholarship is focused on drug discovery using an interdisciplinary approach. As a Senior Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories, he studied a variety of therapeutic targets for which high throughput biochemical assays were developed. He has held the Herman and Margaret Sokol Professorship in Chemistry at Montclair State University and served as Department Chairperson of Chemistry and Biochemistry. During this time, he developed a new graduate course, “Biomolecular Assay Development” that emphasizes teaching of the drug development process, including laboratory and in silico molecular modeling techniques. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Assay and Drug Development Technologies and is a Section Editor of Current Opinion in Investigational Drugs. He has served ten times as a member of the review panel, “Assay Development for High Throughput Molecular Screening” (R03, R21) of the National Institutes of Health, Molecular Libraries and Imaging Initiative. He has published 51 peer reviewed articles and holds six U.S. patents. Dr. Toney joined Kean University in 2008 as Dean of the College of Natural, Applied and Health Sciences. Dr. Toney is Vice President for Academic Affairs (2011- present) at Kean University. He is currently serving as the Chief Academic Officer (since 2011) and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kean University and is continuing interdisciplinary research in drug discovery.

Ann M. Valentine

Associate Professor of Chemistry, Yale University

Professor Valentine earned her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia. She conducted undergraduate research with Timothy Macdonald on aluminum inhibition of magnesium-dependent enzymes. After graduating in 1993, she went to MIT to earn a Ph.D. with Steve Lippard. She then conducted her postdoctoral research at Penn State University and, in 2001, joined the Yale Departmet of Chemistry faculty. Her research explores the use of metals in nature and the development of potential titanium-based anticancer drugs. She has received numerous awards including the American Chemical Society PROGRESS/Dreyfus Lectureship Award in 2007 and the Paul D Saltman Award for Metals in Biology in 2009.

Erskine Williams

Director of Professional Services at Jive Software

Erskine Williams was born and raised in Richmond, Va. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1996 with degrees in Biochemistry & Cognitive Science. After graduating, he moved to Hood River, OR for two years to windsurf. In 1998, he moved to Portland, OR and started software engineering for Intel. From 2000 -2001, he rode the dot.com bubble with a small consulting firm in San Francisco. When the bubble popped, Erskine worked for Barclays Global Investors as a software engineer in San Francisco from 2001 – 2003. In 2003, he married and moved back to Portland working with Fujitsu Biosciences to write 3D molecular modeling software. Then, in late 2005, Erskine joined a company which brings social networking software to businesses.

Mingfei Zhou

Professor of Chemistry at Fudan University

Professor Zhou received his B.S.and Ph.D degrees from Fudan University in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia with professor Lester Andrews from 1997 to 1999. He then joined the chemistry department of Fudan University and became a professor of physical chemistry in 2000 and Cheung Kong Scholar in 2002. He is currently a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Physical Chemistry.